(1927-2013) US author, editor and sf fan, best known since 1953 for producing and contributing significantly to a fanzine, Psychotic, and later a Semiprozine, TheAlien Critic, both of which were, confusingly, at different times known as Science Fiction Review. He has published other Fanzines. His vigorously anti-highbrow judgements were for a long time influential in the sf field; between 1969 and 1983 he six times won a Hugo for Best Fanzine and a further seven times for Best Fan Writer, the 1977 award in the latter category being a tie with Susan Wood. He also won the short-lived Locus Award for Best Critic twice, in 1974 and 1976. Geis was a columnist for Galaxy with "The Alien Viewpoint" 1974-1979; this also appeared in If in 1974. From 2004 to 2010 he published an online fanzine/diary, Taboo Opinions [see links below].

His first published story was "Flight Game" for Adam in 1959. He concentrated thereafter on pornographic fiction, with well over 100 titles, both soft- and hardcore; his personal estimate was 110 such titles. Not many of these had sf or fantastic themes, though exceptions were the Roi Kunzer books – The Sex Machine (1967) and The Endless Orgy (1968) – and the singletons Raw Meat (1969), about a world where Sex is intimately controlled by The Great Mother Computer, The Arena Women (1972) and A Girl Possessed (1973) as by Peggy Swenson. Three further erotic sf novels by Geis were self-published, mimeographed limited editions: Canned Meat (1978 chap), Star Whores (1980 chap) and its sequel The Corporation Strikes Back (1981 chap). In his own publication he serialized his novel "One Immortal Man" (May-November/December 1978 Science Fiction Review), expanded from the short version "One Immortal Man" (in Andromeda 2, anth 1977, ed Peter Weston). Later, writing with Elton T Elliott together as Richard Elliott (whom see for discussion of these books), he wrote the John Norris thrillers set on a Near-Future Earth suffering from Sun-flares caused by a star-wars snafu – The Sword of Allah (1984) and The Burnt Lands (1985) – as well as the singletons The Master File (1986) and The Einstein Legacy (1987). [JC/PN/DRL]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →